Chapter 6 | The Tale of Two Kingdoms

The Student Is Ready

Temmin spent the rest of the evening covering anything reflective in his chambers. The more he thought about it, the angrier and more anxious he got. Who was this Teacher person to be watching his every move? It was bad when all he was worried about was some egghead drilling him on the main exports of the Southern Territories, but this--this was bad enough to keep him from sleep for a good fifteen minutes.

Early the next morning, Temmin fled to the stables. He took Jebby out and rode for all he was worth. If he had lacked a sense of duty, he would have kept on going, straight home to Whithorse. When they rode back into the stable yard, both he and the big horse were flecked with sweat and breathing hard. By the time he returned to his rooms, he didn't even complain when Jenks had his bath ready, but slipped into it almost gratefully.

"Jenks," he called from the tub, "I know you're contemplating some absurdly formal outfit, and Sedra told me to say I don't need to wear a tie!"

"So I've been informed, young sir," said Jenks glumly, surveying the still-natty but more comfortable rig he'd laid out for the prince. "I've made adjustments."

At breakfast, Ellika was once again missing; Sedra said she'd closed out the ball the night before, well after two in the morning. Temmin made noncommittal noises over the damask expanse of table at his family, paying little attention to the conversation, and ate slowly, dreading his upcoming meeting with the Teacher. But eventually he'd eaten all the soft boiled egg and toast even he could hold along with a great deal of bacon, tomatoes, and tea.

There was nothing for it but to head back to his study.

Once there, he opened the curtains further to look out on the rolling green lawns. He paced before the windows, wishing more and more that he was out with Jebby instead of stuck inside waiting for his father's strange advisor. The tension he'd ridden out of himself was coming right back. Was he early, or was the Teacher late? The more vexed he became, the faster he paced.

"You're going to wear a path in the carpet, young sir," said Jenks, coming into the study from the bedroom with the prince's good pair of riding boots in his hands.

"Then I'll wear a path in the carpet," snapped Temmin.

"Very good, your highness," the valet replied icily and swept out of the study with the boots, to parts unknown.

Temmin kicked himself, and stomped up and down in a fury. "Bloody One take this Teacher!" he fumed.

"I wish She would," said the Teacher, standing in the open doorway. "May I come in?"

Temmin glared. "Come in, sir."

"Don't call me 'sir.' Only Teacher. I dislike 'sir' in the extreme."

"Very well, Teacher," sighed Temmin, running a hand through his hair.

"You fear me," said the Teacher.

Temmin crossed his arms. "And how d'you figure that?"

"In all the time I've been watching you-and I've watched you with your father for years, you know--I've rarely seen you lose your temper at someone for no good reason. And in that, you are unusual in this family. 'High-spirited' is how I've always thought of you Tremonts, to put it charitably." The Teacher shrugged. "Little things like snarling at someone you love instead of the real target of your agitation, namely me, is a fair indication that you're afraid of me. Otherwise you'd be snarling at me."

"So, it's snarling you want? How about this: My conversations with Jenks are no concern of yours," said Temmin angrily. "And while we're on the subject, Teacher, I'll thank you to stop spying on me."

"Little boy, I wasn't spying on you," said the Teacher, perching on the arm of the green velvet sofa closest to the windows.

Temmin moved to keep the sofa between him and the Teacher and resumed pacing. "I'm not a--then what would you call it, if not spying?"

"I would call it taking a measure of your character. You should know I don't work any magic whatsoever without your father's permission. I can't. I undertook my observations at his behest."

"I will speak to him, then, and make you stop!"

"No need," said the Teacher with a small bow. "I promise on my honor I will no longer look in on you except at your father's direct command or in times of emergency."

"Hardly reassuring. And about this so-called magic," said Temmin, stopping in his stride. "You're saying I'm special somehow?"

"You personally? No," said the Teacher, amused. "You strike me as fairly ordinary for a...man...of your age and position."

Temmin blinked. "What about my seeing you in the mirror?"

"Your awareness of magic is special, true, but it's minimal. It's more than any royal--any commoner--has managed to scrape up in centuries. But that doesn't make you yourself all that special. You will never be able to wield magic on your own, not as things stand now. Your awareness is just one of the signs, one of many. Some of them involve you, some of them don't."

"And I suppose these signs are a deep dark secret."

"You would suppose correctly. Now," said the Teacher, moving to the library table in the middle of the room and pulling out a chair for Temmin. "I've taken the measure of your character, I should very much like to take the measure of your knowledge. If you please, your highness." Temmin reluctantly joined the Teacher at the table and sat down. The Teacher spun the globe and pointed to the Southern Territories. "We shall start with what you know about trade. What can you tell me about the principal exports of the Southern Territories?"

Temmin groaned inwardly.

Spices, coffee, cocoa and cotton, and their political and financial implications, took up the rest of the morning. "You have two hours for your luncheon and rest, and then we shall resume," said the Teacher, bowing slightly before leaving the study.

Temmin blew out a big breath, stretched, and walked through his bedchamber into his bathroom. He turned on the basin tap and splashed his face, then cautiously looked into the mirror. He saw only the white tiles behind him, and his own reflection.

A noise came from the study, and Temmin immediately felt both remorse and relief. Jenks was probably back, and he now had a chance to atone for his earlier behavior. He dried himself and walked into the study determined to set things right between them.

"Jenks, please don't be angry with me, I was wrong to--oh, hello!"

Standing near the bookshelves with a dusting cloth in her hand was the maidservant he'd danced with when he'd practiced with Ellika. With a horrified look, she immediately turned her face to the wall.

"It's Arta, isn't it? Please turn around, I hate that custom and we don't stand for it at Whithorse," said Temmin coaxingly. Arta looked over her shoulder at him timidly, and he smiled encouragingly. "It's all right."

She turned around fully and twisted the cloth in her hands. "I'm so sorry, your highness, I thought this room was empty this time of day, and I was supposed to give all of the studies a bit of a dusting," she cried softly. Her big hazel eyes fairly pleaded for forgiveness. In the light from the windows, he could see her rosy cheeks and turned-up nose were peppered with freckles. Her unruly hair was once again threatening to escape her lace cap; he remembered how good it had smelled the day before. She looked a bit out of breath, and as Temmin watched the color build in her face he couldn't help but think she really was very fetching in her black and white uniform with its Tremontine red ribbons.

"It's all right," he repeated, and then, without thinking, added, "it's not every day I find a pretty girl in my study." Arta blushed and smiled, then glanced at the door and froze.

Jenks stood in the doorway with Temmin's luncheon on a tray, clearing his throat. Poor Arta quailed, bobbed a curtsy and fled. "Your luncheon, your highness," Jenks said cooly.

"Oh, Jenks, don't be that way," cried Temmin. Jenks put the tray down on the little dining table by the windows and silently set out the meal. "I'm sorry, honestly. I was beastly and wrong and I'm sorry."

The valet straightened and regarded his master sternly. "You were indeed a very crude boy, young sir."

"I was," said Temmin. "Please say you forgive me?" He gave Jenks the most pathetically sad look he could muster.

Jenks rolled his eyes. "Sit. Eat. Or no pudding for you." They grinned at each other, and if he hadn't known it would horrify the man, Temmin would have hugged him in relief till his ribs cracked. "One thing, though," said Jenks, suddenly stern again. "Leave the maidservants alone. That's my hunting ground, not yours. Your highness."

"Bit young for you, old man, wouldn't you say?" said Temmin, sitting down and tucking his napkin in his collar.

"In all seriousness, your highness," Jenks answered gently, "be careful. You're unused to court life and being surrounded by young women. Remember that you are not a carefree boy any more. You are 16. You're a man. And you're the Heir. Even if you weren't young, handsome and splendidly dressed, you would dazzle a princess let alone a maidservant. You may find yourself entangled before you know it."

"I'm not going to get my heart broken by a maid," snorted Temmin.

"Your highness--Temmin--" Jenks put his hand on the prince's shoulder. "Yours isn't the heart I am concerned about." Temmin looked up at him, puzzled. Jenks sighed. "Just be careful. Leave the maids to me. Eat your trout, it's getting cold."

Temmin shrugged and began demolishing his lunch. "So Jenks," he said in between bites, "what do you know about the Teacher?"

Jenks huffed slightly as he straightened the study and answered, "Not much, your highness. The only name I've ever heard attributed to him is 'Teacher.' No first name, no last name. They say he taught your ancestors--all of them."

"That's not possible," snorted Temmin.

"I have been making enquiries below stairs, you know, young sir, but no one who knows anything will talk and those who will talk tell me ridiculous things like that."

"Hmf," mumbled Temmin through a mouthful of potatoes. Who would have thought that city folk would be as superstitious as the country folk who made up the staff at Whithorse? "Teacher" was probably a hereditary position and the man simply resembled his forebears. He decided not to think about it, not while he was eating at least.

Temmin was dreaming.

He was at a ball, except that it wasn't in a ballroom, it was on the outskirts of the lawn by the cedar grove where he'd walked with Sedra. The orchestra floated over the reflection pond, Master Sullo bobbing before his piano, and inside the pavilion Temmin danced with Arta, round and round. He brought her close enough to smell her delicious hair, and then suddenly he was holding her face in his hands and kissing her, though she tried half-heartedly to pull away.

He felt hands on the back of his neck and turned to find Allis Obby, stroking his shoulder softly. He abandoned Arta and kissed Allis passionately, but when it ended she had turned into her brother Issak, and he kissed Issak even more deeply than Allis. Temmin vaguely wondered why it didn't bother him, but Issak tasted the same as Allis except different and then they were all suddenly gone and he was alone. He wandered out of the pavilion, looked into the reflecting pool and saw that face beneath his own again. He picked up a rock and skipped it across the surface and the reflection broke into ripples before the rock suddenly skipped backwards and headed straight for his head.

Temmin woke up with a start. Something had just whacked him on the nose.

"Get up, sir," said the Teacher, brandishing a rolled-up newspaper.

"You hit me!" squawked Temmin.

"Usually I hit princes with canes on the bottom, be grateful it was a newspaper on the nose," retorted the Teacher. "There's nothing I love so well as beating the arrogance out of a prince. I beat your father for two weeks straight before he got his head on the right way round, and he'd be the first person to say it made him a better ruler."

"So you're planning to beat me now?" said the prince, rising from the green velvet sofa and pulling on his suit coat.

"Only if you misbehave. You will be awake when I return from now on or I really will beat you."

Temmin eyed the Teacher warily and finally nodded. "Back to the machinations of the cocoa trade?"

"No. We move on to history."

Temmin groaned. "Honestly, how much history do I need to know? I can recite the kings of Tremont from the First Temmin! Temmin the Great, Gethin the First, Hildin the First, Temmin II, Andrin the First, Temmin III, Andrin II, Harsin the First, Warin the First, Gethin the Sad, Warin the Wise--"

"You forgot Hildin the Usurper."

"Well, does he really count?" said Temmin, throwing himself into the library table chair.

"Hildin's hatred of his brother led directly to the uniting of Leutefloss and Tremont."

"Ah, now you're trying to trick me," said Temmin, arching a brow. "Warin the Wise united the two kingdoms when he married the only child of the last king of Leutefloss."

The Teacher slid a book across the table, neither large nor small, covered in leather dyed Tremontine red. In dull gilt lettering on the spine were the words "An Intimate History of the Greater Kingdom."

Temmin opened the book. "It's blank," he said.

"Once upon a time," said the Teacher, and words blossomed on the page. Temmin pulled back in astonishment. The words vanished again.

Temmin looked up at his Teacher, who gave him a faint smile and nodded toward the book. He took it up again.

"Once upon a time, in the old Kingdom of Leutefloss," began the Teacher again, "there was a Princess with the unfortunate name of Edmerka, a name she hated. She was at heart a kind, spirited girl, but like many princesses, she was lonely. She was an only child. Her mother was dead and her father the king, though he loved her, paid almost no attention to her, trying instead to get an heir from his second wife."

As the Teacher spoke, the words scrolled out onto the formerly empty pages, faster and faster, until it seemed there was no room left on the page, but the words continued to flow. Temmin felt himself drawn in, mesmerized, as images as real as life began to form. "She was left with the servants. And they spoiled her so badly that soon she was as arrogant and haughty as she was lovely-and she was very lovely."

On the page formed an image of a breathtaking girl, about Sedra's age, he guessed. She was dressed like a fairy tale princess from long ago, and he supposed she was. Her thick hair was chestnut brown, her eyes a sapphire blue beneath a strong, fair brow. Her nose was straight and her mouth was soft, but her chin was obstinate. She looked both pathetically sad and spiteful at the same time.

"Her story," said the Teacher, voice increasingly faint as Temmin stared at the book and the pictures began to move, "is called 'The Tale of Two Kingdoms.'" The room fell away, and Temmin was entranced.